Why no spherical rotary valve engines like this in F1

[autogyro]

The intake and exhaust gain nothing from being independent.

The exhaust valve is very hot so that means that if the exhaust and intake valve is one and the same then you have a hot intake valve.

The piston crown and the cylinder walls are all heated by the exhaust gases and cooled by the intake charge. So what?

So what is nowhere near a suitable question. The effect of this heat transfer from exhaust port to inlet charge are major and complex. Serious reductions in cylinder filling is just one.

[gcdugas]

So what is nowhere near a suitable question. The effect of this heat transfer from exhaust port to inlet charge are major and complex. Serious reductions in cylinder filling is just one.

We are having a general discussion of various engine schemes. If one were to describe a conventional F1 V8 the objections would be... high reciprocating mass, inefficient pumping due to valve size and opening limitations, high mechanical losses, high CG due to cylinder head design, etc. Benefits would be ideal combustion chamber shape, ideal spark plug location, poppet valve sealing is augmented during combustion pressures etc. Similarly if one were to describe a conventional turbine engine the objections would be centered around its inability to rapidly change RPM levels and throttle response. A two stroke might be objected to on the grounds of lubrication and emissions.

It is the nature of these general conceptual discussions to say "so what". A jet aircraft doesn't need instantaneous throttle response and is happy running at a constant RPM. It also works very well in the freezing temperatures of the upper atmosphere. A air plane designer says "so what" to throttle response. A spark ignition designer says "so what" to the complexity of an ignition circuit system. We are talking about whole categories of limitations in each scheme. Objections and dismissals are necessarily embraced once you go down a given path. A diesel designer embraces the benefit of needing spark plugs and ignition coils however he inherits other limitations. We are making categorical choices here.

Simply put, "serious reductions in cylinder filling" is not a concern. In the BRV engine, the intake charge encounters the "hot thin wall" of the mutual valve very late in the sequence of events and has about as much effect on the charge filling and temperature as does the intake charges encounter with the piston crown and cylinder walls. A non intercooled turbo on the other and greatly effects these things because the intake is heated (by the compressing turbo) very early in the sequence of things.

The gains in pumping (cylinder filling) and having no reciprocating mass are significant enough to say "so what" when comparing them to nominal losses due to a little (very little) heat during cylinder filling.

Valve sealing, combustion chamber shape, spark plug location are all much more challenging to overcome than your negligible heat issue. And from what we have all read, it seems that these concerns have been effectively addressed in the lab.

[autogyro]

The other problems you mention are not nearly as difficult to cure.A red hot rotating valve is not a negligible issue.
To prevent this the mixture has to be continually rich, resulting in low fuel efficiency and unacceptable exhaust emissions. Worse even than for a rotary engine.
The excuse of finely simulating mixture turbulence, is to try to burn this rich mixture more than anything else.

[Carlos]

An overview of 16 rotary valve developements; 1909>2001
http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/P ... alveIC.htm
I believe one of our forum members held a patent on a rotary valve engine, I remember reading through the abstract and the illustrations, as it was mentioned in a thread, a search of the forum will offer more details. I very much admired the design and have always enjoyed reading the author/patentholder's posts.

[PlatinumZealot]

The intake and exhaust gain nothing from being independent.

The exhaust valve is very hot so that means that if the exhaust and intake valve is one and the same then you have a hot intake valve.

The main problem in the Bishop valve is the heat from the exhaust port in the rotary valve transferring to the inlet port through the uncooled thin wall.

The piston crown and the cylinder walls are all heated by the exhaust gases and cooled by the intake charge. So what? The pumping gains are well worth it and the mechanical gains from having no reciprocating mass in the valve train are worth it. I still can't find the sparkplug location.

At the top corner of the cylinder I guess.
THat BRV can probably be coated with something. Maybe something very reflective on the exhaust side.. It's still going to be hot though. I can't say how much heat transfer to the intake charge though.

My other concerns are just the sparkplug location and the over dependency of one valve on the other (intake and exhaust can't be adjusted independently. In F1 dependency between the valves probably doesn't matter that much anyway because of the rules.. but it is good if the system is flexible so you can apply it to road cars. oh yeah.. you will loose valve overlap with that design too.. that is another thing.

[autogyro]

Effective cylinder filling is to a great extent reliant on valve overlap and duration, which cannot be completely duplicated with both ports/valves in one unit.

[riff_raff]

Effective cylinder filling is to a great extent reliant on valve overlap and duration, which cannot be completely duplicated with both ports/valves in one unit.

I would heartily disagree. I have extensively studied single, bifurcated, axial/radial flow rotary valves for high speed 4-stroke racing engines. And I have a US patent (#5,052,349) on just such a design. Coincidently(?), it is very similar to the Ilmor/Bishop F1 design, and my patent predates theirs by several years. But my patent was only valid in the US, so maybe that's why the Ilmor/Bishop development work was all conducted in Europe.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=TT8gAA ... q=&f=false

I never built a running engine using the design (due to lack of money), but I did lots of flow bench and modeling work with it. What I found was that my single rotary valve had far superior port-time characteristics (due to the more aggressive opening and closing flow areas possible with a fixed speed rotary valve versus a less aggressive cam-driven, reciprocating poppet valve flow), higher mean flow coefficients, better scavenging characteristics, much greater max flow areas possible with a single rotary valve port versus the typical 4-valve poppet head, and less "short circuiting" of intake/exhaust flows during timing overlap due to the tangential, swirling intake flow vectors inherent in the axial/radial porting geometry of the rotary valve. The rapid opening/closing effect of the rotary valve also produced a more intense intake/exhaust flow acoustic signature, which resulted in more power from intake/exhaust manifold tuning.

My rotary valve design also had no valvetrain operating frequency limit, like a poppet valve system has. And it also resulted in a much more compact cylinder head package than a poppet valve/spring/camshaft system. So it had lots of promise for a racing engine application, like in F1. But alas, I didn't have the money to pursue its development. And my patents have now since expired, so anyone is free to use it. And you will have my blessing to do so.

I spent way more money on it than I should have. And in the end, I got nothing from all of my years of effort and tens-of-thousands of dollars spent, except heartache. But honestly, I'd probably do it all over again, because at the time it made me feel that I had a purpose in life.

Good luck.
Terry

[elmerfud]

Friction, heat build up and turbulent airflow, these are the hurdles once your sealing is sorted, i have spent years thinking and reading about this, i wish a commercial company would push harder to overcome the design hurdles with newer materials and techniques.
The old poppet valve starts to look pretty good giving it much thought.

[rotaryvalveman]

to all on this thread. I have a thread on this site callde "Rotary valve technology" and I have some authority on this as I have built and trialed a number of Rotary valve emgines. Yes Poppet valves are well engineered but what I learnt when I made a few iterations of rotary valves is that the things we think we know about the internal combustion engine are not all together fact but natural assumptions. For example, why does a rotary valve engine not like any overlap, why does in#t not like or need much or any ignition advance, why can it tolerate much higher compression ratios or lower grade fuel and despite what one person has written here, the massive amount of turbulance in the combustion chamber you get from fantastic tumble as well as being able to induse swirl gives very complete burning. Now this is based on dyno time, CFD analysis, years of breaking things and a great deal of time, money and effort but I can assure you all gentleman, by the end of this year I will have a running prototype that will blow your socks off. I have met with Peter Gabelish, an exponent of 40 years of the single rotor design that he is allowing me to purchase off of him as he is retiring and I have been to the R.C.Cross ltd works in England to see some examples there as well as the one in the Bathurst meuseum. Believe me bot#ys and girls, the internal combustion engine is far more efficient than you can imagine when that poppet valve and camshaft are gone as it is torque that the RVI design gives you in spades as well as power but it is also CLEANER in emmisions than any poppet valve unit can hope to attain, no matter how you actually actuate it.

[throwaway1]

It is now the end of the year. Have you gotten your prototype up and running? When can we see it?

[elmerfud]

rotaryvalveman,

I may have bumped into this Peter guy, when i was studying toolmaking at night school in 1994 there was a guy building a bishop valve single and giving it a good amount of runtime, this was in Moorabbin in Melbournes east. You are in Brisbane, am i stretching a long bow?

Respect for your opinion too, it certainly has merit (the bishop valve).

[PDCarden]

I thought your design good, all you have to do to solve the head bolt problem is to eliminate the head bolts. If you go on Jay Leno's Garage and go to the video where Jay is disassembling his Merlin engine you will see that the heads and cylinders are one and bolt to the block.

[Desertrunner]

Head bolts can be under the top part of the valve assembly

[CosTa]

[adamflyer]

Has anyone made any progress on a working rotary valve setup?

I'm almost ready for a first test run on one I have been working on:
https://www.facebook.com/pg/goldenfabll ... 1320563614